A Man a Mile
A Man a Mile is the fifth episode in season one of . Synopsis The body of a sixteen year old woman from a well off family is found in a creek, the last seen locations of her alive are traced back to a nightclub. A body is discovered in a sewer tunnel. Plot After a group of miners, the Sandhogs, detonate explosives in a water tunnel, they discover the body of one of their own, Pete Riggs. Mac, Danny, and Flack arrive and examine the body. Pete wasn't supposed to be in the tunnel at all--he worked up top loading and unloading. Tom Mitford, the District Attorney, arrives and urges Mac and Danny to clear the scene quickly, as the tunnel provides crucial water for the city. Danny bristles at the DA, but Mac reigns him in. Meanwhile, Flack talks to the Sandhogs, but none of them can tell him what Pete was doing in the tunnel. Elsewhere, Stella and Aiden respond to a call about a body that's been pulled out of the river. Stella notices the girl's high end clothes, and Aiden pins her age at around sixteen. Back at the station they get an ID on the girl: Hannah Recchi. She lived in Bronxdale, but attended the tony Chase School for Girls. When the detectives visit the school, Hannah's friends Melissa Wesley and Tina Paulson are able to tell them little except for the fact that Hannah was studious and well-liked. Mac goes over Pete's body, noting a circular wound on his head. Danny tells him that Pete had generic steel under his fingernails. Dr. Hawkes reveals that it wasn't the explosion that killed Pete, but his asthma. This leads Mac and Danny to return to the tunnel, where they find Pete's asthma inhaler in the mud. The inhaler is empty. When they return to the elevator, Mac notes scratches on the bottom of it. Someone purposely left Pete in the tunnel. Dr. Hawkes tells Stella and Aiden that Hannah was strangled. There are no signs of sexual assault, though Hannah's blood alcohol levels were high before she died. Hawkes pulls a gold fleck from Hannah's throat and hands it to Stella. Mac and Danny question the Sandhogs, but they all deny seeing anything. Danny tries especially hard to get Joe, Pete's brother, to talk, but Joe is as silent as the rest, claiming, like the others, that Pete's death was an accident. Danny hands him his card just in case Joe changes his mind. Back in the lab, the CSIs go over the Sandhog's clothes. Mac finds trace on the foreman's shirt, while Danny discovers blood on the shoe of Al McGrath. In another lab, Aiden tries to figure out just what material Hannah was strangled with. When Stella enters, she tells her it was something made out of crocodile skin. Stella analyzes diatoms from the water Hannah was in, hoping it will help them figure out where her body was dumped. Danny questions Al, who claims he and Pete fought over the Rangers. Danny notices a bite mark on Al's ear, which Al claims was from Pete. But when Danny matches it with dental impressions from Pete, it doesn't line up. It matches the jaw of a different Sandhog, Tom Zito. Zito had a beef with Pete--Pete carelessly dropped his keys down the mineshaft months ago, and they hit Zito on the head. Zito hasn't been the same since. But Zito claims he left with Al after the scuffle. Using the diatoms, Stella and Aiden figure out Hannah was put in the river at an illegal dump site. A new club has just opened in the area, run by none other than Tina Paulson's older brother, Matt. The trace on the foreman's shirt is identified as medication from an asthma inhaler. Mac and Danny question the foreman, who says he sprayed the inhaler out after Pete dropped something down the mineshaft. Pete's carelessness was endangering the group, the foreman emphasizes. But he claims he didn't kill Pete. Frustrated, Danny insists the answer must lie with Joe. Slick Matt Paulson claims he doesn't remember whether or not Hannah was ever at his club. Stella and Aiden gather surveillance cameras from the neighboring warehouses, which tell a different story. Hannah and Tina did come to the club, and at one point, Hannah and Matt kissed outside the club. They were interrupted by another girl, but Stella and Aiden can't see her head on the tape. The CSIs go to the post duplex Matt and Tina inherited from their parents, but Matt maintains he and Hannah only kissed. Stella excuses herself to use the restroom, and on the way discovers a bloody strap. Tina tells her it was from a foxhunt that her father took her and Hannah on. Her father chose Hannah for the honor of blooding--spreading the fox's blood on her cheeks. Mac and Danny argue over how to handle the case. They've hit a dead end; Mac wants to go back to the evidence, but Danny wants to follow his hunch that Joe Riggs knows something. Mac tells Danny that if he hopes to be promoted, he's going to have to work from the evidence, not his intuition. The pair head to the hospital; Joe Riggs was beaten outside of the water tunnel and is recovering there. But Joe remains stubbornly silent, except to tell them, "it's over." Danny is visibly upset, but Mac insists they go back to the evidence. He's been puzzling over Pete's broken ring finger. Then he realizes Pete's Sandhog ring is missing. Stella and Aiden study the tapes again. Stella notices that in one frame Tina is carrying a purse with a strap, but on another camera, the purse is strapless. They call Tina in. Her lawyer encourages her to be silent, but Tina confesses when Stella tells her a purse strap was found in her room that matched the marks on Hannah's neck. Tina compares killing Hannah to a hunter killing a fox: she watched the life drain out of Hannah's eyes, just like her father watched the life drain out of a fox's eyes during a hunt. Back in the tunnel, Danny and Mac discover Pete's Sandhog ring. The explosion, Mac realizes, was meant to cover up evidence. Mac has Joe brought in, and accuses him of breaking the Sandhog code. He went too far in teaching Pete a lesson after the fight with Al and Tom; he left him down in the tunnel with an empty inhaler. When he discovered Pete was dead the next morning, he used the explosion to cover up Pete's death. Joe asks Mac if he has any idea what it's like to always have to look out for someone else and be responsible for them. Mac doesn't answer. Cast Main Cast * Gary Sinise as Mac Taylor * Melina Kanakaredes as Stella Bonasera * Carmine Giovinazzo as Danny Messer * Hill Harper as Sheldon Hawkes * Eddie Cahill as Don Flack * Vanessa Ferlito as Aiden Burn Guest Cast *Scott Richards as Attorney *Sarah Amstutz as Hannah Recchi *Melissa Zanit as School Girl *Terry Kinney as District Attorney Tom Mitford *Rosalee Mayeux as Hannah's Mother *Melissa Lee as Melissa Wesley *Joshua Leonard as Matt Paulson *Sarah Foret as Tina Paulson *Shashawnee Hall as Foreman *John Dimaggio as Mike Donelly *Vince Donvito as Jeff Wesley *Mel Rodriguez as Al McGrath *Mike Pniewski as Tom Zito *Joseph Sikora as Joe Riggs *Eric Ritter as Pete Riggs Episode Title *''A Man a Mile'', is a reference to an old saying regarding the railroad. When the Transcontinental Railroad was being built it was the Chinese who were actually laying the tracks and supervising the dynamite in the tunnels, and the saying is that 'There is one dead Chinese man for every mile of that railroad.' In this episode, there was a dead man for every mile of tunnel that the construction workers were building under the city. **It also happened in Canada, having the same quote, also there is a site that has a video. Quotes :Mac: Are you bathophobic? :Danny: I'm not anything-phobic. There are just a few things that shake me up. 700 feet of granite between me and daylight is one of them. I don't know how these guys work down here. :Mac: Same way we're going to. Rock by rock. Notes *Mike Pniewski, who plays Tom Zito, also appears in the CSI: Miami episodes ''Dead on Arrival'' and ''Stalkerazzi''. See Also 106 Category:CSI: NY Season 1